Scaffold

From safely above, the busy details
of modern architecture might look simple:

a heart cut deep in snow,
peculiar flakes packed together

in blunt anonymity. The basics
of design serve as foundation;

most mornings we'd rather stay in bed,

the drifts piled high
against the ground-level windows

of the basement apartment.
We'll bundle up and head outside,

our senses shocked numb,
sunblind & barren & sleeping still.

Nathan Pritts
Copyright © 2002

Nathan Pritts received his MFA from Warren Wilson College and is working toward his Ph.D. at the University of Louisiana. His poems have appeared in Rattle, The Evansville Review, Bad Subjects, Drought, and Hellbent, a chapbook from Lazy Frog Press.